The first step is to setup the document with some new Styles and the Layers.

Create a new Layer above the Foreground layer called Overlaps.

Then create 3 new Styles with these names and these options described below:

• Outline Temp: 12 point Red Stroke, No Fill
• Cord Outline: 12 point Gray (any gray you want) Stroke, No Fill
• Cord: 8 point Black Stroke, No Fill

Now we're ready to get started.

Celtic Knots come in all shapes, sizes and patterns. The thing to always remember is that they consist of one continuous line that overlaps itself one or more times. The more elaborate the pattern, the longer this exercise will take, so start with something simple with about 4 overlaps like the path shown above.

Just make sure that it is in fact one path and that it's closed.

Give the shape the Cord Outline style. Clone this and give the clone the Cord style.

Make one more Clone and place that clone on the Overlaps layer. Then lock the Foreground layer so you are just working on the Overlaps layer.

Give this clone on the Overlap layer the Outline Temp style.

Now it's time to create the overlaps to fake the weaving appearance.

First we setup the Knife tool. Double-click on the tool and set it for Straight cuts with a 0 width and turn off the Close cut paths option.

This next part will undoubtedly be confusing, but I'll try to explain it the best I can. If you imagine how the overlapping will look in a Celtic Knot, it would look like the superimposed overlapping shown above. The "rope" would weave in and out wherever it overlaps itself. So if you follow the rope for this exercise, it would weave in and out alternately wherever it intersects with itself.

For every place that the rope goes on top, or over itself, is where we want to cut the Red line.

So with that in mind, pick an intersection which will be the first top overlap. Select the Red line and make the two cuts as shown above.

The cuts should be as wide as you can make them, but not cutting into the next overlap area. It's best to have a little extra in case you need to clean up later.

As we follow the "rope" using the arrows shown above, we get to the second intersection. We skip this one, because it will be below itself. So we continue on until we get to the third intersection.

Here we make the cuts at the dotted lines shown above.

We continue to follow the path, skipping the next intersection and cutting at the next one shown above.

Then we make the final cuts shown above.

If you have a longer Celtic Knot, then continue with this process... following the path and making cuts at every other intersection for the overlaps.

Now select all the parts you don't need and delete them. You should now be left with the little pieces where the overlaps will be created. Select these and Group them.

While this group is selected, give it the Cord Outline style. Clone this Group, then give it the Cord style.

And you should see your finished Celtic Knot shown above. Very Cool!

It's generally a good idea to work very large. Take this path above for example. I started working at a reasonable size.

Suddenly, once I applied my stroke Styles, I could no longer see any distinguishable overlaps.

You can get around this without starting over.

First, double-click on the Scale tool to bring up the Transform palette. Then just turn off the option for Lines.

Select the knot path, and scale it until you see enough of the overlapping lines to work with.

When you are finished, select everything and scale it back down again to tighten up the image. Then the line strokes will be much thicker in appearance.

Special Note           Before                                          After Sometimes when you shrink your art back down, you may start to see strange overlaps like shown above. This is easily remedied by sub-selecting the lines and cutting just enough off so the overlap isn't there anymore.

Of course, using the Styles, you can further edit or add new ones to create different looks to the knots. Easily change the stroke width or color in the styles and see instant results in your designs.

Now that you have the basic idea, go for other more complex Celtic Knot styles and impress your friends, family and coworkers! There is an infinite number of paths that a knot can take, but remember that you may end up spending hours creating the overlaps.